Charlaine Harris
Living Dead in Dallas
Sookie Stackhouse, Book #2

Review brought to you by OBS staff member Heidi

This is the second book in the Sookie Stackhouse/Southern Vampire series that follows Sookie, the young telepathic waitress and all the supernatural beings around her.  The HBO series, True Blood is based on these books.

In this installment of the series, Sookie discovers the dead body of one of the cooks she works with, Lafayette, in a police officer’s, car out in the parking lot.  She knows that the cop, Andy, didn’t kill Lafayette and is on a mission to find out who killed her friend.

But before she can find out any answers her and Bill are summoned to a meeting by Eric.  On the way to the meeting Sookie is attacked by a maenad as a message to Eric.  Eric calls a special doctor and her and the vampires heal Sookie.

Then Eric sends Sookie and Bill on a mission.  To go to Dallas and use Sookie’s telepathic skills to help find a missing vampire, Farrell.

Sookie quickly discovers that the anti-vampire cult, The Fellowship of the Sun, is behind Farrell’s disappearance.  She and one of the vampire’s human boyfriend, Hugo, infiltrates the fellowship’s church looking for signs of Farrell.  Hugo betrays her and they are captured by the Fellowship, who plans to kill them along with Farrell and self-proclaimed evil vampire, Godric, who has volunteered to meet the sun.

Godric saves Sookie from being raped and helps her escape, and then some shapeshifters help her get off of the fellowship property and get her back to the hotel she’s staying at.  The other vampires go and save Farell.

During Farell’s welcome home party, the Fellowship attacks the vampires.  But Sookie hears their approach and saves them.  Eric shields her from flying bullets and ends up getting shot.  He tricks her into sucking the bullet out and swallowing some of his blood in the process, giving him access to her feelings.

Sookie is upset at Bill when she finds out that he went after the Fellowship members and killed some of them.  Sookie goes home without him and refuses to see him any further.  They eventually make up.

Sookie returns home in time to be invited to an adult party and she brings Eric along with her to find out who killed Lafayette.

This is actually my second read of this book, and I must admit the first time I didn’t really care for it, but I think it was because I read the books back-to-back the first time and there was too much repetition between some of them.  But, I found that I enjoyed this read through much better, even though I knew what was going to happen.

I’ve never been a big Bill fan so I liked that this book was the first one that had more Eric in it.  I always enjoyed him tricking her into drinking his blood and the orgy is too funny and probably my favorite part of the whole book.  Just imagining him in pink and teal spandex is enough to keep me laughing for a week.  If only True Blood would have incorporated that into the show!!

Bottom line, this book is pretty good and if you find yourself reading the books  quickly back-to-back and not liking some of them, they are definitely worth a re-read later on to see if your opinion might change.